Where did the Democratic and Republican parties come from? The come from one party called the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson.
Everyone that watches the news knows that America has two political parties: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. They take turns being in charge. The Democratic Party is generally considered to be the more liberal of the two parties and the Republican Party is generally the more conservative. However, the two parties haven’t existed for as long as we might imagine. The Democratic Party took its name officially in 1844 and the Republican Party in 1854.
Up until the American War of Independence, there were no political parties. Each of the colonies were controlled by the King of England’s representative, who was governor and headed a council of appointed people and an assembly of elected people. When Britain passed the stamp act and the colonies started moving on the path to independence, the Continental Congress was formed in 1774. The congress lasted until 1788 and it had 16 presidents, although they were different to the later President of the United States. The Continental Congress had no political parties, and these presidents were elected from within that body. After the war with Britain and when things had settled down, Washington became president in 1789, but he was not a member of any political party either. However, to say there were no political parties does not mean everyone was in agreement. As the constitution was written, factions began to form. There were Federalists who thought the central government should be very strong and there were Anti-Federalists, who believed the states should have more power.
George Washington served two terms and by the time he stepped down these two factions had formed into two distinct groups. The 1796 election was fought between John Adams, who was the candidate for the Federalists, and Thomas Jefferson, who was the candidate for the Republicans. By calling themselves the Republicans, they were referring to the French Revolution and were saying that they wanted a decentralized, republican government. As a form of derision, the Federalists began to call the Republicans the Democratic-Republicans and the name stuck.
John Adams won that election and became the second president of America. Thomas Jefferson’s party officially took the name Democratic-Republican. The 1800 election was again fought between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Jefferson won this one and became the 3rd president of the United States of America, giving the Democratic-Republican Party their first taste of power. Jefferson didn’t win easily, though, because there was a fair amount of division in his party. He won in the end because his party didn’t want people to think there were three political parties in the United States.
Jefferson served two terms and then in 1812, his party lost to James Madison, the 4th president and the head of the Federalist Party. He would be the last leader of the Federalist Party. In 1812, the United States was at war with Britain again. The war wasn’t going well for the United States and several members of the Federalist government secretly tried to broker peace. Unfortunately for the party but not for the USA, Britain initiated peace terms and the war finished. The fact that the Federalists had tried to surrender became common knowledge and the Federalist Party collapsed. It was gone by 1829.
At the same time, the differences of opinion in the Democratic-Republican Party were growing. In 1824, the Federalists were no longer a viable political party, and the election was fought between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, both of the Democratic-Republican Party. Adams won the election, and he appointed people from different factions in his party to important posts to try and fix the rifts, but he couldn’t do it. The party broke up in 1825. After the split, the two halves of the party called themselves the National Republicans and the Democratic Party. The 1828 election was the first one contested between the Republicans and the Democrats.
Interestingly, up until possibly the 1930s, the Republicans were the liberal party and the Democrats were the more conservative party. The Republicans believed that the government should have more power to help people and they were very against slavery. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican president. The Republicans funded the transcontinental railway, the state university system, started the national currency, and protective tariffs. The flipped ideologies in the early 20th century. And this is what I learned today.
Image By Angelus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15935450
Sources
https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/george-washington/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Congress
https://www.americanacorner.com/blog/political-unity
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1776-1783/declaration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_Continental_Congress
https://www.britannica.com/question/What-political-party-did-George-Washington-belong-to
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/teachers/lesson_plans/pdfs/unit1_3.pdf
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Democratic-Republican-Party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic-Republican_Party
https://www.dictionary.com/e/democrats-republicans/https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/formation-of-political-parties.html